Secretary of State Antony Blinken chaired and delivered remarks on famine and conflict-induced global food insecurity at a United Nations Security Council meeting. A focus of the meeting was Russia recently pulling out of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, an agreement between the U.N., Turkey, Russia, and Ukraine that allowed Ukrainian grain and foodstuffs to be exported to developing countries. "Enough using the Black Sea as blackmail," demanded Secretary Blinken, who criticized Russia for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and subsequent blockade of Ukrainian ports, which he said were major factors in rising global food insecurity and prices. Russian Deputy Ambassador to the U.N. Dmitry Polyanskiy blamed international sanctions on Russian agricultural exports as the reason for the withdrawal from the initiative, which Secretary Blinken denied, saying the sanctions excluded such exports.